How Do I Tell You?

Chapter 1

ONE

WINDSOR

The Family Home

October 2005

Victoria Sharpe sighed at the sight of the puddle that greeted her in the hallway as she entered her mother’s house. Back-kicking shut the front door, the weary brunette removed her black puffer jacket and threw it with her overnight bag onto the stairs.

‘Vic? Is that you, love? Let Chandler out, can you?’ As the familiar voice drifted through from the lounge, a cute Border terrier appeared in the hallway, cocked his head to one side and whimpered.

Victoria lifted the pooch into her arms and kissed his scratchy forehead. ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it, lovely? Come on.’

After mopping the hallway, and with Chandler running free in the back garden, Victoria peered through the crack in the living room door. The same ache of disappointment that she had experienced through much of her adult life shrouded her like a heavy cloak. For there was her mother, slouched on the faded couch in complete darkness apart from the eerie glow of the television. Ten empty miniature bottles of vodka lay like fallen soldiers on the dusty coffee table in front of her.

Kath Sharpe glanced up at her daughter, her gaze unfocused. Her salt-and-pepper shoulder-length hair was all over the place. ‘Sweetheart,’ she slurred, attempting a half-smile that failed to reach her bloodshot eyes. ‘You should have told me you were coming.’

As she flicked on the light and turned off the television, a fizzing anger caused Victoria’s voice to tremble. ‘I did, Mum, and you rang only yesterday to tell me you were making us lasagne for dinner.’ She walked over to the front bay window, pulled shut the faded patterned curtains, turned on a couple of lamps and started to clear the empty bottles into an old carrier bag that was lying at her mother’s feet.

‘Don’t throw that big orange one away, will you? I’ll reuse it.’

‘For goodness’ sake, it’s only seven o’clock, and look at you.’ Victoria sighed. ‘And you might as well buy a litre bottle. It must be costing you a fortune this way.’

‘Oh, shut up, Miss Prissy Pants. I’ve been trying. This way means I’m trying.’

Victoria decided not to try and argue with that particular bit of addict’s logic. ‘I thought you were usually at the Overton-Hattons’ on a Friday anyway?’

‘It’s half-term next week, so Connie asked if I could do a double clean once the kids have ransacked the place.’

‘So I guess you’ve sat here all day, drinking.’

‘We’re all entitled to a day off, Vic. Just because you work all hours, doesn’t mean everyone has to.’

Vic’s ‘I love my job’ went completely ignored. She righted her mother’s upturned slippers and placed them neatly by the sofa. ‘ And as for Chandler, the poor little mutt, maybe I should just take him home with me when I’m back from the hen weekend, before somebody reports you for not looking after him properly.’

Kath tutted. ‘Don’t be so over-dramatic. I love that dog. And he’s not going to London. You don’t even have a garden, do you?’

‘If you ever bothered to visit me, Mum, you would know,’ Vic huffed.

‘It’s just been a bit cold to leave the back door open, that’s all,’ Kath snapped. ‘And over my dead body you’ll take my boy anywhere!’

‘If you keep on drinking like you are, Mother, then that could well be the case.’

Kath Sharpe screwed up her face and mimicked, ‘If you keep on drinking like that… Anway, what hen weekend? Who’s getting married now?’

‘Oh, Mum. How many times! Mandy’s getting married. We’re going to Brighton next weekend.’

‘Oh yes. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.’

Not wanting to fuel her mother’s drunken vitriol, Victoria ground her teeth and grabbed the dog’s lead from the side.

Kath shifted her large bottom on the sofa. ‘It’s not a big deal, is it, love? The lasagne, I mean. There’s a pizza in the freezer, or the new neighbour dropped in a bag of fresh samosas earlier. She’s moved down from Edinburgh, she tells me. Jody, I think she said her name was.’

Victoria raised her voice. ‘I don’t want frozen pizza or bloody samosas. Come on, Chandler, walkies!’

‘Have you heard from your brother lately?’ Kath added as Chandler came flying in, jumped onto her lap and started licking her face all over.

Vic grimaced. ‘Ew! Mum, don’t let him do that – it’s disgusting. ’

‘Aww, my little treasure, my little darling.’ Kath ruffled the dog’s ears. ‘So, did you hear from Albie or not?’

‘No, I left him a message on his birthday, but nothing. You?’

‘Who’d have thought my precious little boy was thirty already? Looks even more like his father when he was that age, now, too.’

‘Lucky him,’ Vic said dismissively.

‘That’s not fair. Your father was many things, but his heart was always in the right place.’

‘Just a shame his dick never was.’

‘Victoria! Stop that talk. And yes, Albie popped in yesterday. He comes in most weeks, now. He needed fifty quid for his electric this time. I’d already given him twenty for his birthday. I really don’t know what that boy does with his money.’

‘All hail the prodigal son,’ Vic replied with an eyeroll. ‘And wake up, Mother, that money will be going straight into William Hill’s pocket. You’re not helping him – you know that.’

Kath Sharpe reached for the remote. ‘ He walks the dog.’

‘ He plays you like a fiddle, Mum.’

‘Don’t be like that. He’s a good lad.’

Vic shook her head. ‘With a very bad habit.’ She clipped on Chandler’s lead. ‘I’m going. I’ll pick up fish and chips on the way back.’

‘Get us a bottle of wine too, will you, love?’

Vic didn’t reply as she picked up her bag and headed out. A woman was reversing her car onto next door’s drive as Vic closed the front door behind her and Chandler let out a little bark of approval at his unexpected freedom. The window of the blue Golf slid down.

‘Evening! You must be Kath’s daughter. Vicki, isn’t it?’

Victoria cringed inwardly at the woman’s use of the pet name she really disliked. She stopped, put on her best faux smile, and nodded .

‘Your mum said she was delighted that you were making the effort to come today.’ The neighbour smiled warmly.

‘Oh, really?’

‘And thank heavens for that brother of yours. It sounds like she would be very lonely without him.’ The woman got out of her car.

Victoria had already started walking on but, unable to hold her anger in any longer, turned around. ‘Jody, isn’t it?’ Vic noticed under the outside light that the woman had long shiny black hair. Her deep brown eyes were beautifully framed by soft, dark lashes. She was a similar height and age to her.

‘Joti with a t, Joti Johns… I mean Adams.’ The woman had one of those mixed accents that people who had travelled to various countries seemed to pick up, the kind you could spend hours trying to decipher to work out where they were from and still be none the wiser. She held out her hand, but Vic frowned and refused to take it.

Chandler started to circle for a poo on the tiny patch of grass in front of the neighbour’s bay window. Joti’s face held an expression of horror at the realisation of what was about to happen to her precious piece of lawn.

Completely ignoring Chandler’s intentions, Vic said, ‘I appreciate your observations on my family, Mrs – or is it Miss Ad…?’

‘Very much Miss… I er… I got divorced.’ The woman’s voice wobbled slightly.

‘Oh.’ Vic faltered. ‘I am sorry to hear that, Miss Adams… but can I ask you politely to mind your own fucking business… because you know nothing about mine – or the rest of my family’s, for that matter.’

With a harrumph, Joti put her head down, went inside and slammed the door shut.

A barking Chandler gleefully scrabbled at the lawn with his back paws, causing grass and bits of his business to fly everywhere.

With all its riverside beauty, plentiful history and stunning architecture, Windsor held a special place in Vic’s heart. She had been born Victoria Ann Sharpe in the bedroom of the house her parents had bought back in the sixties for just two thousand pounds, where her mother still lived on benefits, with a top-up from her cleaning jobs. She was named Victoria because Windsor housed one huge castle still inhabited by the royal family. And not Elizabeth, because that was her auntie’s name and, in Kath Sharpe’s words, ‘it would just have caused too much confusion’.

Victoria’s memories of living at number 28, Simpson Crescent, were neither good nor bad – up until she reached five, that was, when her brother Albie had come along, and her philandering father had upped and left, saying that he couldn’t cope with the lack of sleep from another newborn. A baby he had openly declared he had never wanted. A baby who, despite being his absolute ringer as he grew, he had even cruelly insinuated wasn’t his.

Her mother, who had relied on her husband’s plumbing wage for everything, fell apart. To give Barry Sharpe his due, he had long paid off the mortgage with both his father’s inheritance and guilt, but with no other income coming in, besides the family allowance, Kath had turned to cleaning when Albie was just two months old. That, and the various other stresses being a single parent entailed, had made her turn to the bottle.

A shivering Victoria pulled her scarf tightly to her neck as she and Chandler made their way towards the river and its long pathway.

The streets of Windsor were already beginning to fill with Friday night revellers, including squaddies from the local barracks. The town, with all its royal pageantry, was very much a tourist destination, where historic sites were visited by a plethora of nationalities. Sites including neighbouring Eton, famous for its college, whose hallowed halls had been graced by princes and prime ministers.

It was a particularly freezing October night when Victoria reached the river path.

Feeling her shoulders drop at being able to be silent with her thoughts at last, she let out a little sigh of relief. The patchy mist that had formed and floated spookily just above the water of the Thames, in combination with the sporadic cries and calls of water birds, plus creaking tree branches, made for an eerie atmosphere. Lights shining out from various yachts and narrowboats moored along the water’s edge illuminated her way. You could tell the ones that were genuinely loved, with their shiny new paintwork, plant pots and twinkly fairy lights. A couple of tatty older vessels sat in complete darkness, awaiting their fair-weather owners.

Growing up, she had always loved making up stories about who lived in each boat and why – whether it be a grand tale of escape by the young couple who lived on Pastures New , or a city banker’s weekend show-off yacht, aptly named Fortune Afloat . Many boats had come and gone during the years that Vic had walked this path, but there was one that had been in the same spot for as long as she could remember.

Lazy Daze , a red-and-black narrowboat that was always laden with tubs of seasonal flowers, was firmly in the ‘beautifully kept’ category. It was a standout vessel along the river path and inhabited by the enigmatic Jake Turner.

A voice filtered through the gloom, and Vic nearly jumped out of her skin.

‘If it isn’t Kath’s eldest, and that little terror of a terrier. Long time no see, young lady.’ Huge white plumes of smoke mixed with the chilly night air accompanied the man’s posh voice. A distinguished-looking gentleman with a white beard and weather-wrinkled eyes sat quietly at the front of this boat, with a thick grey blanket wrapped around him, smoking a roll-up. His Jack Russell appeared behind him, chasing its tail and yapping, making Chandler bark loudly in response.

‘Hell, Jake, you made me jump. But good to see you.’ Vic smiled. ‘Bit cold in there tonight, though, I expect?’

‘God, no. Toasty as anything. A misconception of all you na?ve house-dwellers.’

‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, and all that, I guess.’ Vic suddenly thought of Nate, her free-spirited other half, and how he would be in his element living on a houseboat.

‘Exactly.’ Jake took a large drag from his cigarette. His little dog ran around his feet, yapping. ‘Norman, will you shut up?’ He ushered the dog inside and shut the door on him. Chandler carried on sniffing around the path. ‘From what I can see of you in this light, you’re looking well. Everything OK? Still painting?’

Vic nodded. ‘Yes, illustrating mainly… At the same place in Putney.’

‘That’s years now you’ve been there, isn’t it? I thought you’d have your own gallery by now.’

‘In my dreams, Jake.’

‘When you were knee high to a grasshopper you had those dreams, and wasn’t it Van Gogh who said, “I dream of painting, then I paint my dream”? Always keep the dream alive, young Victoria. Promise me that?’

Vic smiled through her shiver, surprised that he had remembered her love of drawing when she had been a little girl. ‘One day, Jake, maybe. Who knows?’

‘Come in for a hot chocolate and warm up.’

‘That sounds so lovely, but I’m picking up fish and chips for me and Mum.’ Vic lengthened Chandler’s lead to stop him pulling. ‘So, have you been on any travels lately, then? ’

‘Not for a while, no. I’m the old wanderer who’s never wandered far.’ Jake gave a throaty laugh. ‘Thirty-seven years, I’ve been moored here now. My needs are small. And how many people can say they live in the same town as the Queen, eh? Speaking of which, how’s your mum these days?’ He grinned a slightly crooked grin. ‘I haven’t seen her or this old boy for a while.’ He nodded towards Chandler, who was now busying himself sniffing a mooring post.

Victoria’s face fell. ‘You know – up and down.’

‘The best thing I ever did was give up the demon drink, but you’ve got to either have a wake-up call or really want to do it.’

‘It’s tough for her, I know. But Jake, I just want my mum back.’ Victoria’s voice wobbled.

Jake’s voice softened. ‘You and me both, sweet girl.’ He leant down to put his cigarette butt in an ashtray at his feet. ‘Are you sure you don’t want come in for a chat?’ he offered kindly.

‘No.’ Vic sighed, thinking how lovely it would actually be to just sit for a while with this calm, intelligent man and not have to think about life and all its trials and tribulations. ‘No thanks, Jake. I’d better get back. Next time.’

‘Well, it’s good to see you looking so well. And tell Kath I asked after her, will you? My Norman is always up for a play date with young Chandler on the Brocas.’ He pointed his arm in the direction of the opposite riverbank. ‘You tell her that too, will you?’

‘Yes. I will. Definitely.’ She paused for a second. ‘And thank you, Jake. Thank you. That means a lot.’

Victoria’s eyes stung with unexpected tears as Jake made his way back inside his floating home.

‘Good boy.’ Vic stopped as Chandler cocked his leg on the wall. Despite the now-dark stretch along the river pathway, she could make out two swans, silently swimming alongside them as if paddling along to her inner thoughts.

‘Hello, you two,’ she said aloud, and with Chandler now happily sniffing ahead of her, her thoughts turned back to her mother. For as much as Vic tried to remain calm, it hurt her massively that Kath continued to choose drunken escape over sober reality. Especially on the weekends Vic came down from London to spend time with her.

As she walked on and the chilly night air began to clear her head further, she also began to feel a slight guilt that the new neighbour had taken the brunt of her anger this evening. If a dog had shat on her lawn and the owner hadn’t cleared it up, she would be raging.

Jake noticing that her mum hadn’t been walking down the path so often recently had also made Vic feel sad. Kath’s deterioration was evident, and Vic wasn’t sure what to do. Where was the rule book when it came to your parents making bad life decisions?

It was only recently that she had started thinking about her past and future in any kind of detail. Before, she had always lived in the moment, which involved beavering away at Glovers, the design agency where she worked as a permanent designer and illustrator, and meandering through the relationship motions with Nate, her partner of six years, without a definitive thought for the next day, let alone the next few years.

Vic had been delighted when her oldest schoolfriend, Mandy, had made the move from Windsor to London with her partner’s job change, but it had also surprised her how shocked she was when said friend had announced that she was getting married.

It horrified Vic to think that in five years’ time, she would be forty, and that meant thirty-five years of her life had already gone. Thirty-five years in which she couldn’t recall anything of any real merit that she had achieved. The thought of this had made her not only sit up and smell the coffee, but also feel the next decade approaching at a sensational rate of knots.

Remembering the main purpose for her outing, Vic arrived at the fish-and-chip shop, to see a young woman with a pushchair flying out of the door, causing a delicious waft of frying batter and the cries of a screaming toddler to fill the freezing air.

Thirty-five had also set off a trigger in Vic’s mind about having a family of her own. Before that, she had never felt even the twinge of a maternal pull and still wasn’t sure if the thought had arisen because she should be doing it or because she wanted to do it. Without discussion, she and Nate generally picked child-free hotels when they went away. Was that a sign of what was to come? And if she did decide to go down the family route, what kind of support could she expect? Her mother could hardly be relied on as the doting grandmother. Nate would be the most fun dad a child could ever wish for, but as much as she loved him, he couldn’t be classed as financially or emotionally secure. Her brother lived in his own world and his gambling was a worry. And if she didn’t contact her father – who was currently living with a woman twenty years his junior – on birthdays and at Christmas, she wouldn’t ever hear from him. Logic told her to just let him go. But despite Barry Sharpe not being a constant in her life, she didn’t want to break that bond completely. Especially now that her mum seemed to be there for her only in body, most of the time.

Hard as it was, she had to get real and accept that her life would never be like the movies, and her family were – and always would be – dysfunctional. Her father would never be that special someone she could go to for life advice; her mother would never resemble that sweet little old lady knitting baby clothes; her brother would forever be fighting his own demons. And as for her resembling the angelic daughter – well… that would never be the case, either.

She had always wished that life would throw her some kind of magical future, that her love life would start representing a heartwarming romcom, that her illustration skills would be sought after by a famous author, or her existing painting portfolio by a huge collector. Or that she would have an art gallery with her name above the door.

Mandy cementing her future was the wake-up call Vic had needed. For nobody was coming to save her, and if she wanted all these things, she realised that the only person who could set the ball rolling on this magical mystery tour called life was her! Maybe this was what a mid-life crisis felt like? Her mother had told her that Sidney West, chairman of the Simpson Crescent neighbourhood watch, had had one recently, but he was fifty and it would take more than a two-seater sports car and a piercing through her nose to satisfy hers.

Vic shortened Chandler’s lead and headed for her favourite bench at the leisure-centre end of the river path. When the beloved pooch gave a tiny bark, she swept him up and snuggled him into her for warmth.

‘If only we could look into a crystal ball, hey, fella?’ Or maybe not, Victoria thought. As well as the good, you’d see all the bad things to come – what a terrifying prospect.

She knew that to get where she wanted in life, she would have to put a plan in place – but that would mean making big life decisions, and she wasn’t particularly good at those.

And how on earth could anyone be expected to ride ahead into a happy future if they were always pulling the reins back on it themselves?

Eleven-year-old Chandler could no longer be said to be in the prime of life, and with his short legs tired, and tiny paws cold after the walk, he whimpered to get in the front door when they arrived back at her mum’s place. Vic let him in, deposited the fish suppers and wine on the hall table, and stealthily headed back out to clear up the dog’s mess from next door’s lawn.

Just as she was bending down in front of the bay window, the front door opened and Joti screamed loudly, causing Vic to drop to her knees and scream even louder. Vic then saw the funny side. ‘I’m so sorry I startled you,’ she said through her laughter. ‘I was just?—’

‘I sorted it already,’ Joti replied tightly. She was clearly in no mood for laughing back. ‘Excuse me, I must get to work.’

‘Work? At this time?’

‘Yes, work at this time.’ The attractive woman headed towards her Golf, her face deadpan. ‘And anyway, I didn’t think you liked nosy neighbours.’

‘Touché.’ Vic stood up and bit her lip. ‘Look, I’m sorry I was so rude earlier. You really didn’t deserve the way I spoke to you, and certainly not Chandler’s untimely defecation. It was just?—’

‘You’re right, I didn’t,’ Joti cut in. She got in the car and slammed the door, but then the window slid down, and she regarded Vic thoughtfully. ‘When I have a little tantrum like that,’ she said, her voice softer now, ‘I usually take stock and ask myself what’s really the matter.’

As Chandler whined for attention through a crack in the front door, Victoria stood for a second, taking in Joti’s wise words. Then she burst into tears.